Andrew Lemus

 

This year's Future Preachers Training Camp took a field trip, complete with a few unscheduled stops, up to visit the Conifer church of Christ.  The preacher there is a special young man named Andrew Lemus, a 2007 graduate of the Bear Valley Bible Institute.  It was our privilege to sit and listen to him tell about his background and what impression the school made on him.  It was a very moving story and as moving a class.  He told us about his incredible search for truth, starting from a Catholic upbringing to a search within protestant denominationalism and the community church movement.  He could not find the truth.  He turned to the internet and was taught the truth by a brother in Christ who hails from New York City.  Andrew showed up at a congregation of the Lord's church in his native California, asking to be baptized for the remission of his sins and to die to self and live to Christ.  From there, he developed a zeal for knowledge and a quest to learn more and more.  He also developed an interest in a young lady, the daughter of one of the preachers, who eventually became his wife.  Her encouragement spurred him to enroll at Bear Valley in the fall of 2005, just a year after his coming to Christ.  Though he had no interest at first to be a preaching, desiring instead to learn enough to go back and evangelize his non-Christian family, the study of God's Word filled him with a desire to share those truths with as many people as possible.  To make a fascinating, wonderful story short, he, Aimee, Andrew, and Annabella are working with a church planted in 2007--the Conifer church of Christ.  He is doing an outstanding job!
    As I thrilled to hear his story, it struck me.  Andrew's thirst for Bible truth led him to the Lord and through such salvation.  He simply wanted to obey that Word and share it with others, seizing on the theme verse of the school (2 Timothy 2:2).  Andrew is still a young man, with an overflow of biblical conviction and boundless passion.  Who knows what great good they will accomplish and have already accomplished?  That is always the question.  When someone reveres God's Word and follows it as their pattern for living and when someone with that maintains a good and honest heart, God uses them mightily!  That is the power of the word and the willing heart. --Neal Pollard